


fly away home

by shanlyrical



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron Series - Alexander Freed
Genre: Backstory, First Kiss, M/M, Moral Dilemmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21726025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shanlyrical/pseuds/shanlyrical
Summary: They’d kissed once, when they’d been grounded together during a fleet battle at Sarapin, and they’d laughed about it later and decided they were ill matched.— Alexander Freed,Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron
Relationships: Wyl Lark/Sonogari
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	fly away home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [icandrawamoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/gifts).



“You’re grounded for the next 36 hours. Use the time to reflect upon the importance of following orders.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wyl Lark whispered, hanging his head in shame. He’d never been reprimanded by his Squadron Leader before, and it felt just as awful as the time the sun-lama had shamed him in front of his aunt and uncle for his failure to correctly recite the fourth koan. Besides, the battle was still raging, and the rest of Riot Squadron would be heading back out after a refueling – Wyl hated the thought of not being allowed to support them.

“Oh come, Rununja,” Sonogari interjected, leaping as always to Wyl’s defense, “you shouldn’t blame him. The fault is mine, truly, since I was the one who—”

“Fine! You’re grounded along with your esteemed trainee, Sonogari! Yes, in fact—”

Wyl winced inwardly and kept his eyes pinned resolutely to his toes as Rununja began to shout in earnest. Though he appreciated the moral support, Sonogari shouldn’t have said anything. The squadron needed Sonogari more than Wyl needed Sonogari. He should’ve stood by in silence and let Wyl take his punishment. It made Wyl feel sick to his stomach. As it was, Sonogari had only succeeded in provoking Rununja, and now she was on a real tear.

“—I’m grounding the both of you!” She whirled on Sonogari and hissed, “You can teach Lark the error of his ways…and if he can’t learn, he’s _out_! I will _not_ have pilots who don’t know how to follow direct orders in Riot Squadron!”

Then, without another word, Rununja turned her back on the two men and left the hangar.

Sonogari threw an arm around Wyl’s shoulder. “Oh well, it was worth a try. You hungry? Maybe the mess hall is serving.”

* * *

The mess hall wasn’t serving. Not with the ongoing fleet battle over Sarapin. So they hit up the rations stores and took their food back to the barracks instead.

“Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Sonogari remarked as he threw himself heavily onto his bunk and laid down. “That’s a first.”

Wyl was perched on the edge of his own bunk, hunched over his nutrient pouch and feeling small, feeling ashamed, eating his rations without actually tasting them. The barracks were empty because everyone else was out fighting, he knew. Wyl and Sonogari would be out fighting too if Wyl hadn’t…ugh, if he hadn’t…

“Hey.” Sonogari’s voice interrupted Wyl’s gloom. He reached across the short distance between them – they’d been assigned adjacent lower bunks – and patted Wyl’s knee. “Don’t worry about it. Rununja’s just in a bad mood. Some people get angry and lash out when they’re stressed. She’ll come around after the battle is over; you’ll see.”

Wyl placed his hand over Sonogari’s and squeezed gently. The mutual touch seemed to set his nerve endings alight, and Wyl was acutely aware of the warmth and texture of Sonogari’s skin against his own. He said nothing.

Sonogari was only a few years older than Wyl, but he was at least ten lifetimes more worldly. He’d been the one to teach Wyl to pilot an A-wing when he’d first joined the Rebel Alliance. And although Wyl had begun his career as a starfighter pilot making every newbie mistake and social _faux pas_ in the book, the well of Sonogari’s patience in the face of Wyl’s provincialism had been bottomless. Wyl had had a crush on him ever since.

But he’d never said anything to Sonogari. There was little privacy, and they were rarely alone for long enough for Wyl to work up enough courage. In fact, this was already the longest they’d ever been alone together, and given the circumstances, Wyl didn’t think—

“—do you think?”

Sonogari’s question jolted Wyl out of his thoughts. “I, uh, I wasn’t…” He trailed off, embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t been listening, even though Sonogari was less than a meter away.

“Would I like Polyneus, do you think?” Sonogari repeated. “I’d always been meaning to go visit the mountain aeries on Alderaan, but that was before. Well, you know. There are so many parts of the galaxy I still need to see, but I’d assumed they’d be there waiting for me until I was ready. Now I think, ‘Maker, I have to hurry if I’m going to see everyplace I want to see!’” Sonogari’s expression turned distant, as if he were mentally paging through a galactic tourist’s guide. “I figure the Polynean mountains must be fantastic if they nurture flyers like you!”

Wyl had no idea how his homeworld compared to the rest of the galaxy, but to him it would always be Home, and Home would always be best. “Oh yes. You should visit. I’m sure you’d love it.”

“And you can give me a local guided tour. I’d love to try flying one of your sur-avkas – is that what they’re called? You can teach me like I’ve taught you.”

“I…” Truth be told, Wyl had never considered it. His current life with the Rebel Alliance and his former life on Home were so very different, and he missed Home so badly that it was better, far better, to push it to the back of his thoughts, to keep the memories separate. To keep _the people_ separate.

“I…” Now, though, Wyl tried daring to imagine it. Life after war. Home. And Sonogari. Together. His heart seemed to swell in his chest; he wanted it. He wanted it more than anything.

Sonogari was turned onto his side and smiling up at Wyl, patiently awaiting his response.

“I wouldn’t be the one to teach you. The sur-avka who chooses you will be the only teacher you need,” Wyl said.

“My favorite painting when I was a boy was ‘The Last Flight of Orunis’ by Guri’i,” Sonogari announced out of the blue. It seemed like a complete change of subject, but from experience Wyl knew it wasn’t and that the connection would explain itself in time. “It hangs in the Imperial Gallery on Coruscant – have you ever seen it?”

Wyl shook his head. No, of course he hadn’t. Not even a holo. “What was Orunis?”

“Who, not what. Orunis was the legendary inventor – a boy prodigy, really – who built himself a pair of waxwork wings and flew so high that he got too close to the sun. His wings melted, and he fell to his death.”

“Oh, how gruesome,” Wyl murmured.

“If it were real, yeah, except the story is mainly supposed to be a warning against hubris. Don’t get too full of yourself, you know? But that painting is the reason I became a pilot. Guess I figured that what Orunis really needed was a sturdier set of wings! Durasteel, not wax – that’d be the ticket!” Sonogari chuckled and shook his head ruefully at his younger self. “Ah, if only we were as invincible as all that in our A-wings…” He stood up; the hand that’d been on Wyl’s knee moved to his shoulder. Fingers brushed the back of Wyl’s neck; Wyl had to force himself not to shiver. “I should thank you.”

Wyl felt caught in the interdiction field of Sonogari’s eyes. The air between them seemed to hum. “But I was wrong to disobey a direct order,” he whispered.

They’d had one chance to take out that Star Destroyer’s cannon. Riot Leader Rununja had ordered them to focus their remaining concussion missiles on it.

Wyl had used his last concussion missile – _the squadron’s last concussion missile_ – on the TIE that would’ve blown Sonogari out of the sky.

“You look exactly like Guri’i’s Orunis. Black hair, sun-burnished skin. Someday, after the war, we’ll go see it. I will take you to Coruscant. The painting’s absolutely breathtaking in person, and Orunis with his wings…so gorgeous. I used to think Orunis was the most beautiful boy in the whole galaxy…” Sonogari’s breath was hot on Wyl’s face. They were close, so close…

…their lips touched.

Wyl moaned into Sonogari’s mouth and reached up to wrap his arms around his neck, to grasp him tighter, to kiss him harder—

Their wrist comlinks chimed. “Three and Seven, report to the hangar immediately.”

They broke apart.

It was Rununja, using their callsigns and not their names. That was an implicit apology, and if she was apologizing, it meant she wanted them back in the air—

They left the barracks at a sprint and talked no more of Home.

* * *

_Wyl dreams of flying away Home. Not to Home as it was, but rather to Home as it is – as it will be – to Home after the Empire._

_The sky is poison; the sur-avkas are nearly extinct. The land is denuded; the jungles have been clear-cut, seas of dead stumps. Wyl weeps in his sleep._

_Polyneus is no tourist destination…not unless you’ve come for the views of planetary catastrophe. For the environmental disaster porn. But still. It is Wyl’s Home. It is his only Home._

_It will take a lifetime of labor, no, more than lifetime’s worth of labor, and the labor of beings innumerable, to restore what has been lost. If it can even be restored. But Wyl is willing to try. He is eager to begin._

_Yet he cannot start until the war is over, and the war will not be over until the galaxy is free, and Wyl Lark does the galaxy no favors when he disobeys direct orders and puts his personal relationships first, before freedom for the galaxy. Before Home._

_Sonogari does not want to labor alongside Wyl. He wants to visit a hundred hundred exotic worlds. He wants to look at beautiful things. He wants to travel after the war. After the war, Wyl wants never to travel again._

_Wyl also wants Sonogari to be happy, and Sonogari would not be happy with a thankless life of unending labor on Home. Wyl knows this, and so does Sonogari.  
_

_After this crush fades, they will laugh about it together. But for now, in his dream, Wyl grieves for what might have been._


End file.
